O POET rare and old!
Thy words are prophecies;
Forward the age of gold,
The new Saturnian lies.
The universal prayer
And hope are not in vain;
Rise, brothers! and prepare
The way for Saturn's reign.
Perish shall all which takes
From labor's...

What dost thou here, thou shining, sinless thing,
With many colored hues and shapely wing?
Why quit the open field and summer air
To flutter here? Thou hast no need of prayer.
'Tis meet that we, who this great structure built,
Should come to be redeemed...

Supposed to be written by the chairman of the "Central Clique" at
Concord, N. H., to the Hon. M. N., Jr., at Washington, giving the result
of the election. The following verses were published in the Boston
Chronotype in 1846. They refer to the contest...

Done at Atlanta, in the Day of Death, 1906
O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears
an-hungered in these fearful days--
_Hear us, good Lord!_
Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a...

As I lie in bed,
Flat on my back;
There passes across my ceiling
An endless panorama of things--
Quick steps of gay-voiced children,
Adolescence in its wondering silences,
Maid and man on moonlit summer's eve,
Women in the holy glow of Motherhood,
Old...

Written in the summer of 1856, during the political campaign of the Free
Soil party under the candidacy of John C. Fremont.
Up, laggards of Freedom!--our free flag is cast
To the blaze of the sun and the wings of the blast;
Will ye turn from a struggle...

For the sun that shone at the dawn of spring,
For the flowers which bloom and the birds that sing,
For the verdant robe of the gray old earth,
For her coffers filled with their countless worth,
For the flocks which feed on a thousand hills,
For the...

Written after the election in 1586, which showed the immense gains of
the Free Soil party, and insured its success in 1860.
BENEATH thy skies, November!
Thy skies of cloud and rain,
Around our blazing camp-fires
We close our ranks again.
Then sound...

Written on the adoption of Pinckney's Resolutions in the House of
Representatives, and the passage of Calhoun's "Bill for excluding Papers
written or printed, touching the subject of Slavery, from the U. S.
Post-office," in the Senate of the United States....

THE firmament breaks up. In black eclipse
Light after light goes out. One evil star,
Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,
As in the dream of the Apocalypse,
Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep
Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep
Our...

WHEN first I saw our banner wave
Above the nation's council-hall,
I heard beneath its marble wall
The clanking fetters of the slave!
In the foul market-place I stood,
And saw the Christian mother sold,
And childhood with its locks of gold,
Blue-eyed...

THE day's sharp strife is ended now,
Our work is done, God knoweth how!
As on the thronged, unrestful town
The patience of the moon looks down,
I wait to hear, beside the wire,
The voices of its tongues of fire.
Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem...

Written for the Fssex County Agricultural Festival, 1865.
THANK God for rest, where none molest,
And none can make afraid;
For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest
Beneath the homestead shade!
Bring pike and gun, the sword's red scourge,
The negro's...

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves,
And against the morning's white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
We'll turn our faces southward, love,
Toward the summer isle
Where bamboos spire the shafted grove
...

Dey was hard times jes fo' Christmas round our neighborhood one year;
So we held a secret meetin', whah de white folks couldn't hear,
To 'scuss de situation, an' to see what could be done
Towa'd a fust-class Christmas dinneh an' a little Christmas fun.
Rufus...

Brother, come!
And let us go unto our God.
And when we stand before Him
I shall say--
"Lord, I do not hate,
I am hated.
I scourge no one,
I am scourged.
I covet no lands,
My lands are coveted.
I mock no peoples,
My people are mocked."
And, brother,...

Read before the Alumni of the Friends' Yearly Meeting School, at the
Annual Meeting at Newport, R. I., 15th 6th mo., 1863.
ONCE more, dear friends, you meet beneath
A clouded sky
Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
And on the sweet spring airs...

THROUGH the long hall the shuttered windows shed
A dubious light on every upturned head;
On locks like those of Absalom the fair,
On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair,
On blank indifference and on curious stare;
On the pale Showman reading from...

On the passage of the bill to protect the rights and liberties of the
people of the State against the Fugitive Slave Act.
I SAID I stood upon thy grave,
My Mother State, when last the moon
Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.
And, scattering ashes...

In November, 1861, a Union force under Commodore Dupont and General
Sherman captured Port Royal, and from this point as a basis of
operations, the neighboring islands between Charleston and Savannah were
taken possession of. The early occupation of this...

Gay little Girl-of-the-Diving-Tank,
I desire a name for you,
Nice, as a right glove fits;
For you--who amid the malodorous
Mechanics of this unlovely thing,
Are darling of spirit and form.
I know you--a glance, and what you are
Sits-by-the-fire in...

To be a Negro in a day like this
Demands forgiveness. Bruised with blow on blow,
Betrayed, like him whose woe dimmed eyes gave bliss
Still must one succor those who brought one low,
To be a Negro in a day like this.
To be a Negro in a day like...

Suggested by a visit to the city of Washington, in the 12th month of
1845.
WITH a cold and wintry noon-light
On its roofs and steeples shed,
Shadows weaving with the sunlight
From the gray sky overhead,
Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built
town...

This poem was written in strict conformity to the account of the
incident as I had it from respectable and trustworthy sources. It has
since been the subject of a good deal of conflicting testimony, and the
story was probably incorrect in some of its...

See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air
Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he
Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye!
No light is there; none, save the glint that shines
In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs
Of some wild animal...

Thomas Barber was shot December 6, 1855, near Lawrence, Kansas.
BEAR him, comrades, to his grave;
Never over one more brave
Shall the prairie grasses weep,
In the ages yet to come,
When the millions in our room,
What we sow in tears, shall reap.
Bear...

IN the solemn days of old,
Two men met in Boston town,
One a tradesman frank and bold,
One a preacher of renown.
Cried the last, in bitter tone:
"Poisoner of the wells of truth
Satan's hireling, thou hast sown
With his tares the heart of youth!"
Spake...

Gone are the sensuous stars, and manifold,
Clear sunbeams burst upon the front of night;
Ten thousand swords of azure and of gold
Give darkness to the dark and welcome light;
Across the night of ages strike the gleams,
And leading on the gilded host...

We are children of the sun,
Rising sun!
Weaving Southern destiny,
Waiting for the mighty hour
When our Shiloh shall appear
With the flaming sword of right,
With the steel of brotherhood,
And emboss in crimson die
Liberty! Fraternity!
We are...

Come home with me a little space
And browse about our ancient place,
Lay by your wonted troubles here
And have a turn of Christmas cheer.
These sober walls of weathered stone
Can tell a romance of their own,
And these wide rooms of devious line
Are...

Oh little Christ, why do you sigh
As you look down to-night
On breathless France, on bleeding France,
And all her dreadful plight?
What bows your childish head so low?
What turns your cheek so white?
Oh little Christ, why do you moan,
What...

In the report of the celebrated pro-slavery meeting in Charleston, S.C.,
on the 4th of the ninth month, 1835, published in the Courier of that
city, it is stated: "The clergy of all denominations attended in a body,
lending their sanction to the proceedings,...

O, rich young lord, thou ridest by
With looks of high disdain;
It chafes me not thy title high,
Thy blood of oldest strain.
The lady riding at thy side
Is but in name thy promised bride,
Ride on, young lord, ride on!
Her father wills and she...

Dr. Neall, a worthy disciple of that venerated philanthropist, Warner
Mifflin, whom the Girondist statesman, Jean Pierre Brissot, pronounced
"an angel of mercy, the best man he ever knew," was one of the noble
band of Pennsylvania abolitionists, whose...

O chillen, run, de Cunjah man,
Him mouf ez beeg ez fryin' pan,
Him yurs am small, him eyes am raid,
Him hab no toof een him ol' haid,
Him hab him roots, him wu'k him trick,
Him roll him eye, him mek you sick--
De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man,
O...

If this is peace, this dead and leaden thing,
Then better far the hateful fret, the sting.
Better the wound forever seeking balm
Than this gray calm!
Is this pain's surcease? Better far the ache,
The long-drawn dreary day, the night's white...

Prefixed to the volume of which the group of six poems following this
prelude constituted the first portion.
I WOULD the gift I offer here
Might graces from thy favor take,
And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere,
On softened lines and coloring,...

Del Cascar, Del Cascar,
Stood upon a flaming star,
Stood, and let his feet hang down
Till in China the toes turned brown.
And he reached his fingers over
The rim of the sea, like sails from Dover,
And caught a Mandarin at prayer,
And tickled his...

All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them.--MATTHEW vii. 12.
BEARER of Freedom's holy light,
Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod,
The foe of all which pains the sight,
Or wounds the generous ear of God!
Beautiful...

The storming of the city of Derne, in 1805, by General Eaton, at the
head of nine Americans, forty Greeks, and a motley array of Turks and
Arabs, was one of those feats of hardihood and daring which have in all
ages attracted the admiration of the multitude....

"PUT up the sword!" The voice of Christ once more
Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar,
O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped
With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow
Under a rain of fire; through...

To dreamy languors and the violet mist
Of early Spring, the deep sequestered vale
Gives first her paling-blue Miamimist,
Where blithely pours the cuckoo's annual tale
Of Summer promises and tender green,
Of a new life and beauty yet unseen.
The...

So oft our hearts, beloved lute,
In blossomy haunts of song are mute;
So long we pore, 'mid murmurings dull,
O'er loveliness unutterable.
So vain is all our passion strong!
The dream is lovelier than the song.
The rose thought, touched by words,...

The garden is very quiet to-night,
The dusk has gone with the Evening Star,
And out on the bay a lone ship light
Makes a silver pathway over the bar
Where the sea sings low.
I follow the light with an earnest eye,
Creeping along to the thick far-away,
Until...

Dr. Charles Follen, a German patriot, who had come to America for the
freedom which was denied him in his native land, allied himself with the
abolitionists, and at a convention of delegates from all the anti-
slavery organizations in New England, held...

_(In the Chapel)_
The appointed lot has come upon me, mother,
The mournful ending of my years of strife,
This changing world I leave, and to another
In blood and terror goes my spirit's life.
But thou, grief-smitten, cease thy mortal weeping
And...

_On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Signing of the Emancipation
Proclamation._
O brothers mine, to-day we stand
Where half a century sweeps our ken,
Since God, through Lincoln's ready hand,
Struck off our bonds and made us men.
Just fifty...

So much have I forgotten in ten years,
So much in ten brief years; I have forgot
What time the purple apples come to juice
And what month brings the shy forget-me-not;
Forgotten is the special, startling season
Of some beloved tree's flowering...

Inscribed to friends under arrest for treason against the slave power.
THE age is dull and mean. Men creep,
Not walk; with blood too pale and tame
To pay the debt they owe to shame;
Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep
Down-pillowed, deaf...

WITH clearer light, Cross of the South, shine forth
In blue Brazilian skies;
And thou, O river, cleaving half the earth
From sunset to sunrise,
From the great mountains to the Atlantic waves
Thy joy's long anthem pour.
Yet a few years (God make...

"The thing which has the most dissevered the people from the Pope,--the
unforgivable thing,--the breaking point between him and them,--has been
the encouragement and promotion he gave to the officer under whom were
executed the slaughters of Perugia....

The earliest poem in this division was my youthful tribute to the great
reformer when himself a young man he was first sounding his trumpet in
Essex County. I close with the verses inscribed to him at the end of his
earthly career, May 24, 1879. My poetical...

I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
Eager to heed desire's insistent call:
Ah, little dark girls, who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from...

GONE, gone,--sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty...

RIGHT in the track where Sherman
Ploughed his red furrow,
Out of the narrow cabin,
Up from the cellar's burrow,
Gathered the little black people,
With freedom newly dowered,
Where, beside their Northern teacher,
Stood the soldier, Howard.
He listened...

NOT unto us who did but seek
The word that burned within to speak,
Not unto us this day belong
The triumph and exultant song.
Upon us fell in early youth
The burden of unwelcome truth,
And left us, weak and frail and few,
The censor's painful work...

OH, none in all the world before
Were ever glad as we!
We're free on Carolina's shore,
We're all at home and free.
Thou Friend and Helper of the poor,
Who suffered for our sake,
To open every prison door,
And every yoke to break!
Bend low Thy...

I want to die while you love me,
While yet you hold me fair,
While laughter lies upon my lips
And lights are in my hair.
I want to die while you love me,
And bear to that still bed,
Your kisses turbulent, unspent
To warm me when I'm dead.
I...

If we must die--let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die--oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In...

This and the four following poems have special reference to that darkest
hour in the aggression of slavery which preceded the dawn of a better
day, when the conscience of the people was roused to action.
THE evil days have come, the poor
Are made...

One does such work as one will not,
And well each knows the right;
Though the white storm howls, or the sun is hot,
The black must serve the white.
And it's, oh, for the white man's softening flesh,
While the black man's muscles grow!
Well I...

There are no hollows any more
Between the mountains; the prairie floor
Is like a curtain with the drape
Of the winds' invisible shape;
And nowhere seen and nowhere heard
The sea's quiet as a sleeping bird.
Now we're traveling, what holds back
Arrival,...

Why do men smile when I speak,
And call my speech
The whimperings of a babe
That cries but knows not what it wants?
Is it because I am black?
Why do men sneer when I arise
And stand in their councils,
And look them eye to eye,
And speak their...

It was not fate which overtook me,
Rather a wayward, wilful wind
That blew hot for awhile
And then, as the even shadows came, blew cold.
What pity it is that a man grown old in life's dreaming
Should stop, e'en for a moment, to look into a woman's...

ACROSS the sea I heard the groans
Of nations in the intervals
Of wind and wave. Their blood and bones
Cried out in torture, crushed by thrones,
And sucked by priestly cannibals.
I dreamed of Freedom slowly gained
By martyr meekness, patience, faith,
And...

On summer afternoons I sit
Quiescent by you in the park,
And idly watch the sunbeams gild
And tint the ash-trees' bark.
Or else I watch the squirrels frisk
And chaffer in the grassy lane;
And all the while I mark your voice
Breaking with love and...

On hearing the bells ring on the passage of the constitutional amendment
abolishing slavery. The resolution was adopted by Congress, January 31,
1865. The ratification by the requisite number of states was announced
December 18, 1865.
IT is done!
Clang...

The massacre of unarmed and unoffending men, in Southern Kansas, in May,
1858, took place near the Marais du Cygne of the French voyageurs.
A BLUSH as of roses
Where rose never grew!
Great drops on the bunch-grass,
But not of the dew!
A taint in...

DOUGLAS MISSION, August, 1854,
LAST week--the Lord be praised for all His mercies
To His unworthy servant!--I arrived
Safe at the Mission, via Westport; where
I tarried over night, to aid in forming
A Vigilance Committee, to send back,
In shirts...

A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire,
A faith which doubt can never dim,
A heart of love, a lip of fire,
O Freedom's God! be Thou to him!
Speak through him words of power and fear,
As through Thy prophet bards of old,
And let a scornful people hear
Once...

A pleasant print to peddle out
In lands of rice and cotton;
The model of that face in dough
Would make the artist's fortune.
For Fame to thee has come unsought,
While others vainly woo her,
In proof how mean a thing can make
A great man of its doer.
To...

Oh, for the veils of my far away youth,
Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth,
Why did I stray from their shelter and grow
Into the sadness that follows--to know!
Impotent atom with desolate gaze
Threading the tumult of hazardous ways--
Oh,...

WE wait beneath the furnace-blast
The pangs of transformation;
Not painlessly doth God recast
And mould anew the nation.
Hot burns the fire
Where wrongs expire;
Nor spares the hand
That from the land
Uproots the ancient evil.
The hand-breadth cloud...

Written on reading an account of the proceedings of the citizens of
Norfolk, Va., in reference to George Latimer, the alleged fugitive
slave, who was seized in Boston without warrant at the request of James
B. Grey, of Norfolk, claiming to be his master....

It is recorded that the Chians, when subjugated by Mithridates of
Cappadocia, were delivered up to their own slaves, to be carried away
captive to Colchis. Athenxus considers this a just punishment for their
wickedness in first introducing the slave-trade...

In a foot-note of the Report of the Senate of Massachusetts on the case
of the arrest and return to bondage of the fugitive slave Thomas Sims it
is stated that--"It would have been impossible for the U. S. marshal
thus successfully to have resisted the...

Eternities before the first-born day,
Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
A brooding mother over chaos lay.
And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay,
Shall run their fiery courses and...

(_To Robert Gould Shaw_)
Flushed with the hope of high desire,
He buckled on his sword,
To dare the rampart ranged with fire,
Or where the thunder roared;
Into the smoke and flame he went,
For God's great cause to die--
A youth of heaven's...

Full many lift and sing
Their sweet imagining;
Not yet the Lyric Seer,
The one bard of the throng,
With highest gift of song,
Breaks on our sentient ear.
Not yet the gifted child,
With notes enraptured, wild,
That storm and throng the heart,
To...

GOD bless New Hampshire! from her granite peaks
Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks.
The long-bound vassal of the exulting South
For very shame her self-forged chain has broken;
Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth,
And in the...

O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still...

O Southland! O Southland!
Have you not heard the call,
The trumpet blown, the word made known
To the nations, one and all?
The watchword, the hope-word,
Salvation's present plan?
A gospel new, for all--for you:
Man shall be saved by man.
O...

_From the French of Massillon Coicou (Haiti)_
I hope when I am dead that I shall lie
In some deserted grave--I cannot tell you why,
But I should like to sleep in some neglected spot
Unknown to every one, by every one forgot.
There lying I should...

Suggested by reading a state paper, wherein the higher law is invoked to
sustain the lower one.
A Pious magistrate! sound his praise throughout
The wondering churches. Who shall henceforth doubt
That the long-wished millennium draweth nigh?
Sin in...

Ur ol' Hyar lib in ur house on de hill,
He hunner yurs ol' an' nebber wuz ill;
He yurs dee so long an' he eyes so beeg,
An' he laigs so spry dat he dawnce ur jeeg;
He lib so long dat he know ebbry tings
'Bout de beas'ses dat walks an' de bu'ds dat...

"I can remember when I was a little, young girl, how my old mammy would
sit out of doors in the evenings and look up at the stars and groan, and I
would say, 'Mammy, what makes you groan so?' And she would say, 'I am
groaning to think of my poor children;...

Read at Woodstock, Conn., July 4,1883.
WE give thy natal day to hope,
O Country of our love and prayer I
Thy way is down no fatal slope,
But up to freer sun and air.
Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet
By God's grace only stronger made,
In future...

THE South-land boasts its teeming cane,
The prairied West its heavy grain,
And sunset's radiant gates unfold
On rising marts and sands of gold.
Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State
Is scant of soil, of limits strait;
Her yellow sands are sands...

This poem indicates the exultation of the anti-slavery party in view of
the revolt of the friends of Martin Van Buren in New York, from the
Democratic Presidential nomination in 1848.
Now, joy and thanks forevermore!
The dreary night has wellnigh...

He came, a youth, singing in the dawn
Of a new freedom, glowing o'er his lyre,
Refining, as with great Apollo's fire,
His people's gift of song. And thereupon,
This Negro singer, come to Helicon
Constrained the masters, listening to admire,
...

Read at the dedication of Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, May 15, 1838.
The building was erected by an association of gentlemen, irrespective of
sect or party, "that the citizens of Philadelphia should possess a room
wherein the principles of Liberty,...

On the dusty earth-drum
Beats the falling rain;
Now a whispered murmur,
Now a louder strain.
Slender, silvery drumsticks,
On an ancient drum,
Beat the mellow music
Bidding life to come.
Chords of earth awakened,
Notes of greening...

I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of to-morrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come...

Written on reading the Message of Governor Ritner, of Pennsylvania,
1836. The fact redounds to the credit and serves to perpetuate the
memory of the independent farmer and high-souled statesman, that he
alone of all the Governors of the Union in 1836...

_Sculptured Worship_
The zones of warmth around his heart,
No alien airs had crossed;
But he awoke one morn to feel
The magic numbness of autumnal frost.
His thoughts were a loose skein of threads,
And tangled emotions, vague and dim;
And...

_Laughing It Out_
He had a whim and laughed it out
Upon the exit of a chance;
He floundered in a sea of doubt--
If life was real--or just romance.
Sometimes upon his brow would come
A little pucker of defiance;
He totalled in a word the...

_Exit_
No, his exit by the gate
Will not leave the wind ajar;
He will go when it is late
With a misty star.
One will call, he cannot see;
One will call, he will not hear;
He will take no company
Nor a hope or fear.
We shall smile...

_The Way_
He could not tell the way he came,
Because his chart was lost:
Yet all his way was paved with flame
From the bourne he crossed.
He did not know the way to go,
Because he had no map:
He followed where the winds blow,--
And the...

_Onus Probandi_
No more from out the sunset,
No more across the foam,
No more across the windy hills
Will Sandy Star come home.
He went away to search it
With a curse upon his tongue:
And in his hand the staff of life,
Made music as...

As o'er his furrowed fields which lie
Beneath a coldly dropping sky,
Yet chill with winter's melted snow,
The husbandman goes forth to sow,
Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast
The ventures of thy seed we cast,
And trust to warmer sun and rain
To...

Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear a solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes...

Heart free, hand free,
Blue above, brown under,
All the world to me
Is a place of wonder.
Sun shine, moon shine,
Stars, and winds a-blowing,
All into this heart of mine
Flowing, flowing, flowing!
Mind free, step free,
Days to follow...

"Sebah, Oasis of Fezzan, 10th March, 1846.--This evening the female
slaves were unusually excited in singing, and I had the curiosity to ask
my negro servant, Said, what they were singing about. As many of them
were natives of his own country, he had...

Oh, praise an' tanks! De Lord he come
To set de people free;
An' massa tink it day ob doom,
An' we ob jubilee.
De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves
He jus' as 'trong as den;
He say de word: we las' night slaves;
To-day, de Lord's freemen.
De yam will...

I had no thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists' shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed...

The "Times" referred to were those evil times of the pro-slavery meeting
in Faneuil Hall, August 21, 1835, in which a demand was made for the
suppression of free speech, lest it should endanger the foundation of
commercial society.
Is this the land...

Out in the Night thou art the sun
Toward which thy soul-charmed children run,
The faith-high height whereon they see
The glory of their Day To Be--
The peace at last when all is done.
The night is dark but, one by one,
Thy signals, ever and...

So many cares to vex the day,
So many fears to haunt the night,
My heart was all but weaned away
From every lure of old delight.
Then summer came, announced by June,
With beauty, miracle and mirth.
She hung aloft the rounding moon,
She poured...

I am so tired and weary,
So tired of the endless fight,
So weary of waiting the dawn
And finding endless night.
That I ask but rest and quiet--
Rest for days that are gone,
And quiet for the little space
That I must journey on.
...

The five poems immediately following indicate the intense feeling of the
friends of freedom in view of the annexation of Texas, with its vast
territory sufficient, as was boasted, for six new slave States.
Up the hillside, down the glen,
Rouse the...

The band of Gideon roam the sky,
The howling wind is their war-cry,
The thunder's roll is their trump's peal,
And the lightning's flash their vengeful steel.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With...

There is music in me, the music of a peasant people.
I wander through the levee, picking my banjo and singing
my songs of the cabin and the field. At the
Last Chance Saloon I am as welcome as the violets
in March; there is always food and...

I must not gaze at them although
Your eyes are dawning day;
I must not watch you as you go
Your sun-illumined way;
I hear but I must never heed
The fascinating note,
Which, fluting like a river-reed,
Comes from your trembling throat;
I...

THE flags of war like storm-birds fly,
The charging trumpets blow;
Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,
No earthquake strives below.
And, calm and patient, Nature keeps
Her ancient promise well,
Though o'er her bloom and greenness sweeps
The battle's...

Captain Jonathan Walker, of Harwich, Mass., was solicited by several
fugitive slaves at Pensacola, Florida, to carry them in his vessel to
the British West Indies. Although well aware of the great hazard of the
enterprise he attempted to comply with...

In a publication of L. F. Tasistro--Random Shots and Southern Breezes--
is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the
auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as "A GOOD CHRISTIAN!" It
was not uncommon to see advertisements of...

The reader of the biography of William Allen, the philanthropic
associate of Clarkson and Romilly, cannot fail to admire his simple and
beautiful record of a tour through Europe, in the years 1818 and 1819,
in the company of his American friend, Stephen...

"Joseph Sturge, with a companion, Thomas Harvey, has been visiting the
shores of Finland, to ascertain the amount of mischief and loss to poor
and peaceable sufferers, occasioned by the gun-boats of the allied
squadrons in the late war, with a view to...

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard
Heap high the golden corn
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!
Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine;
We...

(_A Negro Sermon_)
And God stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said,
_"I'm lonely--
I'll make me a world."_
And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then...

Written on learning the terms of the treaty with Mexico.
ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's
drouth and sand,
The circles of our empire touch the western ocean's
strand;
From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and
free,
Flowing down...

The rights and liberties affirmed by Magna Charta were deemed of such
importance, in the thirteenth century, that the Bishops, twice a year,
with tapers burning, and in their pontifical robes, pronounced, in the
presence of the king and the representatives...

The Dawn's awake!
A flash of smoldering flame and fire
Ignites the East. Then, higher, higher,
O'er all the sky so gray, forlorn,
The torch of gold is borne.
The Dawn's awake!
The dawn of a thousand dreams and thrills.
And music singing...

This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief.
Sorrow without relief.
Pay it I will to the end--
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release--
Gives me the clasp of peace.
Slight was the thing I bought,
Small...

HE had bowed down to drunkenness,
An abject worshipper
The pride of manhood's pulse had grown
Too faint and cold to stir;
And he had given his spirit up
To the unblessed thrall,
And bowing to the poison cup,
He gloried in his fall!
There came...

IT chanced that while the pious troops of France
Fought in the crusade Pio Nono preached,
What time the holy Bourbons stayed his hands
(The Hun and Aaron meet for such a Moses),
Stretched forth from Naples towards rebellious Rome
To bless the ministry...

THROUGH heat and cold, and shower and sun,
Still onward cheerly driving
There's life alone in duty done,
And rest alone in striving.
But see! the day is closing cool,
The woods are dim before us;
The white fog of the wayside pool
Is creeping slowly...

Moses Kimball, a citizen of Boston, presented to the city a duplicate
of the Freedman's Memorial statue erected in Lincoln Square, Washington.
The group, which stands in Park Square, represents the figure of a
slave, from whose limbs the broken fetters...

FROM gold to gray
Our mild sweet day
Of Indian Summer fades too soon;
But tenderly
Above the sea
Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's moon.
In its pale fire,
The village spire
Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance;
The painted walls
Whereon...

Christ washed the feet of Judas!
The dark and evil passions of his soul,
His secret plot, and sordidness complete,
His hate, his purposing, Christ knew the whole,
And still in love he stooped and washed his feet.
Christ washed the feet of Judas!
Yet...

HURRAH! the seaward breezes
Sweep down the bay amain;
Heave up, my lads, the anchor!
Run up the sail again
Leave to the lubber landsmen
The rail-car and the steed;
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed.
From the...

Written for the anniversary celebration of the first of August,
at Milton, 7846.
A FEW brief years have passed away
Since Britain drove her million slaves
Beneath the tropic's fiery ray
God willed their freedom; and to-day
Life blooms above those...

Written on reading pamphlets published by clergymen against the
abolition of the gallows.
THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone
Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,
And mountain moss,...

Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.
She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,
The light gauze hanging...

OF all that Orient lands can vaunt
Of marvels with our own competing,
The strangest is the Haschish plant,
And what will follow on its eating.
What pictures to the taster rise,
Of Dervish or of Almeh dances!
Of Eblis, or of Paradise,
Set all aglow...

Pray why are you so bare, so bare,
Oh, bough of the old oak-tree;
And why, when I go through the shade you throw,
Runs a shudder over me?
My leaves were green as the best, I trow,
And sap ran free in my veins,
But I saw in the moonlight dim...

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters...

Sewanee Hills of dear delight,
Prompting my dreams that used to be,
I know you are waiting me still to-night
By the Unika Range of Tennessee.
The blinking stars in endless space,
The broad moonlight and silvery gleams,
To-night caress your...

IN the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame,
So terrible alive,
Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, became
The wandering wild bees' hive;
And he who, lone and naked-handed, tore
Those jaws of death apart,
In after time drew forth their honeyed store
To...

Some leading sectarian papers had lately published the letter of a
clergyman, giving an account of his attendance upon a criminal (who had
committed murder during a fit of intoxication), at the time of his
execution, in western New York. The writer describes...

These lines were written when the orators of the American Colonization
Society were demanding that the free blacks should be sent to Africa,
and opposing Emancipation unless expatriation followed. See the report
of the proceedings of the society at its...

IT was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain
Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again;
The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay
With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow-flowers of May.
Through...

A number of students of Fisk University, under the direction of one of
the officers, gave a series of concerts in the Northern States, for the
purpose of establishing the college on a firmer financial foundation.
Their hymns and songs, mostly in a minor...

This poem and the three following were called out by the popular
movement of Free State men to occupy the territory of Kansas, and by the
use of the great democratic weapon--an over-powering majority--to settle
the conflict on that ground between Freedom...

Written on hearing of the death of Silas Wright of New York.
As they who, tossing midst the storm at night,
While turning shoreward, where a beacon shone,
Meet the walled blackness of the heaven alone,
So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed,
In...

His spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven.
His father, by the crudest way of pain,
Had bidden him to his bosom once again;
The awful sin remained still unforgiven.
All night a bright and solitary star
(Perchance the one that ever guided him,
Yet...

A STRONG and mighty Angel,
Calm, terrible, and bright,
The cross in blended red and blue
Upon his mantle white.
Two captives by him kneeling,
Each on his broken chain,
Sang praise to God who raiseth
The dead to life again!
Dropping his cross-wrought...

"WELL speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast!
Yet all unworthy of its trust thou art,
If, with dry eye, and cold, unloving heart,
Thou tread'st the solemn Pantheon of the Past,
By the great Future's dazzling hope made blind
To all the beauty, power, and...

WHEN Freedom, on her natal day,
Within her war-rocked cradle lay,
An iron race around her stood,
Baptized her infant brow in blood;
And, through the storm which round her swept,
Their constant ward and watching kept.
Then, where our quiet herds...

O'er all my song the image of a face
Lieth, like shadow on the wild sweet flowers.
The dream, the ecstasy that prompts my powers;
The golden lyre's delights bring little grace
To bless the singer of a lowly race.
Long hath this mocked me: aye...

These truly are the Brave,
These men who cast aside
Old memories, to walk the blood-stained pave
Of Sacrifice, joining the solemn tide
That moves away, to suffer and to die
For Freedom--when their own is yet denied!
O Pride! O Prejudice! When they...

From a vision red with war I awoke and saw the Prince
of Peace hovering over No Man's Land.
Loud the whistles blew and the thunder of cannon was
drowned by the happy shouting of the people.
From the Sinai that faces Armageddon I heard this chant
...

Written upon hearing that slavery had been formally abolished in Egypt.
Unhappily, the professions and pledges of the vacillating government of
Egypt proved unreliable.
BY fire and cloud, across the desert sand,
And through the parted waves,
From...

Addressed to the Patrons of the Pennsylvania Freeman.
THE wave is breaking on the shore,
The echo fading from the chime
Again the shadow moveth o'er
The dial-plate of time!
O seer-seen Angel! waiting now
With weary feet on sea and shore,
Impatient...

ALL night above their rocky bed
They saw the stars march slow;
The wild Sierra overhead,
The desert's death below.
The Indian from his lodge of bark,
The gray bear from his den,
Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark,
Glared on the mountain men.
Still...

The General Association of Congregational ministers in Massachusetts met
at Brookfield, June 27, 1837, and issued a Pastoral Letter to the
churches under its care. The immediate occasion of it was the profound
sensation produced by the recent public...

STILL in thy streets, O Paris! doth the stain
Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain;
Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins through,
And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew,
When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread,
At a crowned murderer's beck of...

"GREAT peace in Europe! Order reigns
From Tiber's hills to Danube's plains!"
So say her kings and priests; so say
The lying prophets of our day.
Go lay to earth a listening ear;
The tramp of measured marches hear;
The rolling of the cannon's wheel,
The...

Written on hearing that the Anti-Slavery Resolves of Stephen C. Phillips
had been rejected by the Whig Convention in Faneuil Hall, in 1846.
LIFT again the stately emblem on the Bay State's
rusted shield,
Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our...

THE proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!
Who serves...

Before the law authorizing imprisonment for debt had been abolished in
Massachusetts, a revolutionary pensioner was confined in Charlestown
jail for a debt of fourteen dollars, and on the fourth of July was seen
waving a handkerchief from the bars of...

I HAVE been thinking of the victims bound
In Naples, dying for the lack of air
And sunshine, in their close, damp cells of pain,
Where hope is not, and innocence in vain
Appeals against the torture and the chain!
Unfortunates! whose crime it was to...

NOT without envy Wealth at times must look
On their brown strength who wield the reaping-hook
And scythe, or at the forge-fire shape the plough
Or the steel harness of the steeds of steam;
All who, by skill and patience, anyhow
Make service noble,...

President Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation was issued
January 1, 1863.
SAINT PATRICK, slave to Milcho of the herds
Of Ballymena, wakened with these words
"Arise, and flee
Out from the land of bondage, and be free!"
Glad as a soul in pain,...

THE Quaker of the olden time!
How calm and firm and true,
Unspotted by its wrong and crime,
He walked the dark earth through.
The lust of power, the love of gain,
The thousand lures of sin
Around him, had no power to stain
The purity within.
With...

ALL grim and soiled and brown with tan,
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
Smiting the godless shrines of man
Along his path.
The Church, beneath her trembling dome,
Essayed in vain her ghostly charm
Wealth shook within his gilded home
With strange...

Written on receiving a cane wrought from a fragment of the wood-work
of Pennsylvania Hall which the fire had spared.
TOKEN of friendship true and tried,
From one whose fiery heart of youth
With mine has beaten, side by side,
For Liberty and Truth;
With...

On the 2d of June, 1854, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia,
after being under arrest for ten days in the Boston Court House, was
remanded to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act, and taken down State
Street to a steamer chartered by the United...